>The stuff ends up being so esoteric, that rarely will these trainees actually be able to use this knowledge for their own programs (i'm open to counterexamples

>The stuff ends up being so esoteric, that rarely will these trainees actually be able to use this knowledge for their own programs (i'm open to counterexamples here). In my own work I have to use the hyperloglog[1] algorithm pretty often. If I didn't know CS basics it would be a complete blackbox to me. Or say someone is building a database and needs to make sure that chances of personally identifiable information getting released is minimized. He'll probably have to use some sort of differential privacy[2] algorithm. If someone has never encountered probability how would he even understand the requirements? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperLogLog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperLogLog [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy#Formal_definition_and_example_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy#Formal_de...